Lag - Fiend

Lag - Fiend
The techno on Bas Mooy's Mord label tends to follow a well-established blueprint: sleek, slamming and orthodox. Serbian producer Milos Martinov returns for a second EP on the label with two tracks that tinker with that formula. Both his contributions are syncopated but not with the kind of slinkiness that makes rhythms sound sexy or inviting. Rather, his jackhammer swing is more like doubling up punches.

In spite of its roughness, "Kontrola" is actually sort of lighthearted: beneath the pounding kicks are slithering synths and rave whistles, along with scatting vocal samples that give it an excitable momentum. It's head-banging techno with a playful side. There's nothing so fun about "Trema," where the drum programming is dense and the melody limited to harsh bleeps that fly off like debris from all the mechanical grinding. Both originals have a lot of personality squeezed into their ironclad bars, which the remixes ditch in favor of functionality. Mooy's rework of "Kontrola" is a pitch-perfect techno banger, while Clouds turn "Trema" into one of their rickety junkyard techno jams, molding the tracks to their own style rather than doing anything enlightening with them.